Put the World in Your Pocket with Marble

KDE's Marble breaks free of the desktop—and it knows where it's going.

Have you ever wondered what it would be like to have the whole world at
your fingertips? How about cradling it in a single hand, putting it in
your pocket and taking it with you wherever you go? With KDE's Marble
Virtual Globe on your mobile phone, you can do just that.

Yes, you now can run Marble on a smartphone that supports Nokia's Qt
framework. That could be useful, the next time you are arguing with a friend
about which is farther north: London, England, or London, Canada. However,
you could answer that kind of question using a mobile Web browser, or
you even could use your phone to call someone and ask. At first glance,
having a virtual globe on your phone seems like little more than a fun
gimmick—something to play with and impress your friends. But if
you look a little deeper, you will find that Marble can do much more than
plug the gaps in your geography knowledge. It can help you find yourself
and guide you home.

Figure 1. Marble's mobile version puts the
world at your fingertips.

Navigate Freely

Marble has long been KDE's virtual globe application, providing satellite,
atlas and OpenStreetMap mapping of the world. Since its 0.10 release last
August, Marble has included route-finding capabilities, so you can enter
two locations and have Marble calculate a route and provide step-by-step
directions. However, with version 1.0, released in 2010, Marble's
navigational capabilities and optimizations for mobile devices have really come
of age. Combined with a suitable smartphone, this gives you a completely free
navigation system—free software and free map data.

Figure 2. You easily can use a smart phone
running Marble as an in-car satellite navigation device.

So, how can you use Marble to turn your phone into a personal navigational
device? In principle, you can run the software on any device that supports
Nokia's Qt toolkit. In practice, most testing is done on Nokia N900s
running Maemo, and packages are available for this platform. Marble
also will run fine on MeeGo when the first MeeGo-powered phones appear. In
the view of lead developer Torsten Rahn, “It would be really cool to
see Marble prepackaged for more platforms, such as Symbian, Android,
WinCE and others.”

Get Marble on Your Nokia N900

Most testing of the mobile version of Marble is done using Maemo on Nokia's
N900 smartphone. Packages are available to make
installation easy.

To get the mobile version of Marble, simply point your phone's Web browser to the
Marble Web site (edu.kde.org/marble), navigate to the Download section and scroll
down to find the Maemo packages.

Click on the Maemo package, and when it has downloaded, the Maemo package
manager should open. You just need to make a few more clicks to confirm
that you want to add the Marble software catalog, and then Marble will
be ready to use. You also will find that the Marble software catalog enables you
to
install the marble-maps package that gives you access to additional
maps, such as satellite imagery, if you want to try something different from the
default OpenStreetMap maps.

If you want to be able to calculate routes without an Internet connection,
you also should install monav-routing dæmon, which also is part of the
Marble software catalog in the Maemo package manager.

Once you have Marble installed, you just need an excuse to play
with it. Imagine that your employer calls you at home one morning and
wants you to to travel to a client's office a couple cities away. Over
breakfast, fire up Marble on your mobile phone, enter your current
location or let Marble find it using GPS, enter your destination and
wait for Marble to query a range of routing services before presenting
you with a set of options, the best selected by default. If you want
to avoid a road you know is particularly busy in the morning,
you can choose one of the alternative routes or set an additional
via point to avoid it. If you need to pick up your suit from the dry
cleaning shop on the way, you can add that to the route too.

When you are happy with your journey plan, just use your home wireless
network to download the maps for the entire route before you hit the
road. That way, you won't have to use more expensive mobile network
bandwidth on the journey. Then, you can flick Marble into guidance mode,
sit back in your car and watch as Marble tracks your progress along the
route and provides step-by-step directions and relevant maps. While you
travel, you will see that Marble displays a progress bar to warn you of
the next turn (it counts down from 1,000m). You can check the icon that
shows you the direction of the next turn and know that if it is grayed
out, the next turn is still more than 1,000m away. Check the step-by-step text instructions for further guidance. You also get to see the
overall distance to the destination and can toggle between guidance and
map mode that enables you to pan and zoom the map manually. Remember
also to keep your eyes on the road.

Figure 3. Marble's customized guidance
mode interface shows only the information you need: the next turn and
when to expect it.

You might be tempted to play with Marble's routing just for the fun of it,
while racking up big mobile data bills to download all the map data. So,
it's fortunate that Marble allows you to download map data for planned
journeys at a convenient time, such as when you are within range of
your home wireless network. According to developer Dennis Nienhüser,ï¿¼
“Marble 1.0 allows you to download map data along the route, which keeps
the download amount significantly lower if you're interested only in the
route part.” This can cut data downloads by 85–90%. You even can work
out routes entirely off-line. Marble can download a set of off-line maps
to do vehicle routing all around the world.